In recent years, slim and light liquid crystal display devices (LCDs) with improved performance have been used in different kinds of electronic devices, such as mobile phones, notebook computers and flat-panel TV sets. Their applications now extend to larger public display devices, such as scoreboards at stadiums or large billboards at stores. As a result, the LCDs must be large enough in size that a number of people can view the displayed image clearly from distant places. However, for the fabrication of a large display device, larger processing equipments are required, and furthermore, failure of a large glass substrate will cost more.
Currently, a multiple-display device has been developed to fulfill the demands of large size and low manufacturing cost. A multiple-display device may be produced by combining a plurality of small-sized displays. FIG. 1 is a perspective view of a multiple-display device in related art, and FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view taken along line B-B′ of FIG. 1.
As shown in FIG. 1, a multiple-display device 50 in related art is manufactured by four liquid crystal display modules 10, 20, 30 and 40 arranged as an array. As shown in FIG. 2, the liquid crystal display modules 10 and 20 include liquid crystal panels 11 and 21 for displaying images, backlight units 12 and 22 comprising light sources 16 and 26 for supplying uniform light to the liquid crystal panels 11 and 21, bottom bezels 13 and 23 for supporting the backlight units 12 and 22, and frames 14 and 24, together with top cases 15 and 25, for supporting and retaining the liquid crystal panels 11 and 21 therein, respectively. The backlight units 12 and 22 respectively include light-guiding plates 17 and 27 and optical-film stacks 18 and 28. The light-guiding plates 17 and 27 are disposed at the light emitting side of the light sources 16 and 26 and guiding the light emitted from the light sources 16 and 26 through the optical-film stacks 18 and 28 into the liquid crystal panels 11 and 21, respectively, for providing uniform light to the liquid crystal panels 11 and 21.
The multiple-display device 50 has an active area (AA) where an image is displayed and a non-active area (NA) where no image is displayed in each display module. The non-active area NA surrounds the active area AA. As shown in FIG. 1, the dimensions of the combined non-active area NA interposed between adjacent two LCD modules are defined as “L” in Y-axis and “M” in X-axis. As shown in FIG. 2, since the backlight units 12 and 22 belong to edge-type backlight units, the dimension L is made larger than the dimension M. Unfortunately, wide non-active area NA is an obstacle to the enhancement of the image quality of the display. The non-active area might adversely affect the continuity of an image shown on a multiple-display device.